David Benioff

Benioff was born David Friedman in New York City in 1970, the youngest of three children of Barbara Benioff Friedman and Stephen Friedman. He grew up a child of privilege, as his father was an executive with investment bank Goldman Sachs, and later, an advisor to U.S. president George W. Bush and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As a boy, David gravitated to all things literary, fancying comic books and classic far-flung fantasy such as Homer's Iliad and J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, his imagination supplemented by an affinity for playing Dungeons & Dragons. He offset his self-described geekiness by joining the wrestling team at New York's exclusi... Continue Bio >>